[Autumn]

Skill Slots are a major problem recently for certain updated classes, most notably Black Knight and Verglas, demon hunter is among these but I feel like one good focus to have is trimming down on skill slot costs for them in particular, with these classes receiving lower SP costs as a whole it just means you have more skills you could be equipping all at once, which means it bloats your skill slots quite heavily if you do want to equip them.

Its not a surprise that many people have flocked to tomes recently, most notably the tome-weapon shifter line in order to gain more skill slots, while that is a sound choice in helping build diversity I feel like people who just wanna use a regular old sword or fist weapon or how you not shouldn't be shafted so much in terms of what they can equip.

The issues with the classes I mentioned is that none of them have skills that you can invest into more in order to make cost no skill slots, a 2nd rank should be added to the following skills to do so:

-Black Deflection
-Sudden Death
-Ice Point
-Ice Point Guard
-Ice Point Greaves

This would at least make life on these classes easier for investing a little more SP instead, which does make an impact on the whole skill build itself when tallied up.

Lastly, demon hunter also has some skill point and skill slot issues, that I think would be helped out majorly by changing the following skills:
-Reaver Stance
-Desperado Stance
-Matador Stance
-Cobra Stance

If you were to change these skills to be 1 rank but have the same effects, but have a 2nd rank that causes them to cost no skill slots, that might please a lot more people. (And remove Matador from having a 400 rage cap with spirit)

[Mr.SmileGod]

I'm not entirely opposed to certain passive skills becoming innate through SP, but personally I feel the idea you tossed in Discord was probably the easier and more suitable solution to the skillslots issue: just... increasing the base by 5 or so. Everyone struggles with skill slots-- Any time I have a character that doesn't, I feel like it's a miracle. Of course, it's a limiting factor for a reason, but as most classes have been getting the occasional extra skill dropped in, the problem has gotten worse over time.

So yeah. This wouldn't be bad, but I still think increasing the skill slot base would probably be better. Or do both.

[Autumn]

I'm not entirely opposed to certain passive skills becoming innate through SP, but personally I feel the idea you tossed in Discord was probably the easier and more suitable solution to the skillslots issue: just... increasing the base by 5 or so. Everyone struggles with skill slots-- Any time I have a character that doesn't, I feel like it's a miracle. Of course, it's a limiting factor for a reason, but as most classes have been getting the occasional extra skill dropped in, the problem has gotten worse over time.

So yeah. This wouldn't be bad, but I still think increasing the skill slot base would probably be better. Or do both.

While I agree that just increasing base skill slots would be a blanket fix to these issues, it also ends up just allowing certain other builds to beef up and SWA gouge as well, when the core issue is class costs on certain aspects (Demon Hunter/Black Knight/Verglas/Tactician) then the floor shouldn't be raised, the high class costs should be normalized and brought down to a regular level.

Lets assume for a second that the average skill point cost to max a skill is 3, given the abundance of 1 SP max skills or 5 SP Max skills this is reasonable, this means that (on average) a class will be dedicating roughly 5-10 skill slots to it, you have 4 classes with SP available to equip to you, meaning you could have anywhere from 20 skill slots to 40 total skills to account for, if we normalize this and bring the rough number down to about 25-30 that should please most people I feel, and all that means is that you need to make only a couple of skills in some base classes and promoted classes have a 'free skill slot' rank attached to them.

To put Black Knight into light specifically here, if I wanted to equip a whole bunch of black knight skills, but not all of them, here is what my build might consider:
-Checkmate, Hanging, Crescent Rook, Board Shaker, Castling, Sacrifice, Prophylaxys, Forced Move, Sudden Death, Black Deflection, Stalemate, Black Drain.
For a total of 12 skills, and thats not even counting some other good portions of black knight like Bright Bishop, Steel Aura or Steel Body.

Mages were given skill slots on tomes because of a lack of SKI or GUI that could be present in their build, not necessarily to just give them more free skills to have, it also doesn't make Will too powerful while keeping mages more in line with actually having a number skill slots in their builds, but right now with the abundance of skills currently, you're practically forced to have high SKI with a tome to equip certain classes, with the exception of summoner or rogue since they have innate synergy with skill slots.

[Maksimum_Fire]

Honestly, I've never felt all that limited in skill pool, even on DH, a high skill-pool cost class(to my understanding?) that ran zero skill and zero guile- and no tome. Anecdotal, and I also just accepted that I couldn't have some of the options available to the classes I had- but regardless, I feel like it's really not that imposing.

It's not the same topic as skill point allocation, but I see it in a similar light. You lose some options, you gain some others. I don't think this is any sort of urgent change.

That said, it'd certainly make a more new-player friendly experience, due to making it much easier to build these high-skill pool cost classes. So while I personally don't think it's all that necessary, and could encourage the skill-pool-less gouge builds that are already popular- it provides ease of access to new players, and I wouldn't disapprove of that I guess.

[Lonestar]

Honestly, I've never felt all that limited in skill pool, even on DH, a high skill-pool cost class(to my understanding?) that ran zero skill and zero guile- and no tome.  Anecdotal, and I also just accepted that I couldn't have some of the options available to the classes I had- but regardless, I feel like it's really not that imposing.

It's not the same topic as skill point allocation, but I see it in a similar light.  You lose some options, you gain some others.  I don't think this is any sort of urgent change.

That said, it'd certainly make a more new-player friendly experience, due to making it much easier to build these high-skill pool cost classes.  So while I personally don't think it's all that necessary, and could encourage the skill-pool-less gouge builds that are already popular- it provides ease of access to new players, and I wouldn't disapprove of that I guess.

While it is true that you are not supposed to have everything, but that is already stopped by having a limited amount of class level and Skill Points. Placing another barrier from having your skills of choice sounds incredibly contradictory when some classes are getting Skill Points adjustments. You'll get everything you want, but you won't be able to use everything you have, which doesn't provoke any other feeling that frustration for most people.

Some classes just have alot of passive skills that need a Skill Slot and often times they're incredibly good ones, making you lose either another good passive or more offensive power. Unfortunately, even if your build is a pure autohit SWA gouge unga or a normal basic hitting build, you won't have everything that you built for because the stats used for extra Skill Slots are extremely situational for certain builds. You will hardly use WIL or GUI in a basic hitting build unless your weapon scales off from that or your stat spread is not that bad.

The example Spoops provided above about the new Black Knight summarizes the problem that had been occouring since Boxer's SP rework and Verglas' class rework. I would really like to see a change in regards to that, because if there is none, then it beats the point reducing the SP amount for those skills if you can't use them anyways.

[Kameron8]

I agree.  It often feels like we have to make tough decisions on which skills to invest SP in (for some classes), then an even tougher decision about which half of the abilities we've just chosen to actively equip.  Some of the newer classes that have been reworked especially accentuate this, with tons of low SP abilities that take up a Skill Slot.

[Sawrock]

People want more skills by making skills cost less, so they can pick everything in their build. Then they want more skill slots since most don't take GUI/SKI and see it as dump stat; as others have stated, why would you want SKI when you're just using autohits and you can outdamage the enemy's evasion?

What this leads to is to-hit build's main strategy of skill flexibility (balanced because they have to invest in SKI/GUI) becoming a thing for all builds. Why wouldn't you pick a stat spread that's fully tanky, with giant SWA and every skill you want to solve every situation you get into, as opposed to a stat spread that relies on chance to hit things, chance to crit things, less damage since people have more defense than you, less mobility since people can just range you with autohits while you're forced to either move next to them or pick BK specifically for hanging (if you're a melee build, that is)...

Meta builds are becoming too diverse and "do-it-all" with no weaknesses. It's just a matter of mashing rock against rock.

To clarify, I'm heavily biased since I have some dedicated crit builds that can't crit or do more damage than some other non-dedicated autohit builds, so take these words with a grain of salt.

[Mr.SmileGod]

My personal experience comes from someone that BEAT their skillslots like they owed me money. With 33, I still have a multitude of skills I'm unable to equip. There should be a limiting factor, of course, but when a large portion of my build goes towards it and I still come short, I feel like a bit of tweaking would be appreciated. And this isn't with any of the classes even mentioned in this thread, either.

[Kameron8]

People want more skills by making skills cost less, so they can pick everything in their build. Then they want more skill slots since most don't take GUI/SKI and see it as dump stat; as others have stated, why would you want SKI when you're just using autohits and you can outdamage the enemy's evasion?

What this leads to is to-hit build's main strategy of skill flexibility (balanced because they have to invest in SKI/GUI) becoming a thing for all builds. Why wouldn't you pick a stat spread that's fully tanky, with giant SWA and every skill you want to solve every situation you get into, as opposed to a stat spread that relies on chance to hit things, chance to crit things, less damage since people have more defense than you, less mobility since people can just range you with autohits while you're forced to either move next to them or pick BK specifically for hanging (if you're a melee build, that is)...

Meta builds are becoming too diverse and "do-it-all" with no weaknesses. It's just a matter of mashing rock against rock.

To clarify, I'm heavily biased since I have some dedicated crit builds that can't crit or do more damage than some other non-dedicated autohit builds, so take these words with a grain of salt.

I don't disagree that investing in the prerequisite stats should offer you more flexibility than the 10 Skill Slot, 90 Strength unga-Shaitan.  However, I think it's fair to identify this as a problem when it still feels like you're gouged for slots even when you invest heavily into Skill, and moderately (30 or so) into Will.  You should not be required to take sixty Skill, Will, and Guile to equip a healthy amount of abilities.

In the same vein, you shouldn't get a free pass on having next to no skill slots just because you happened to play classes that don't tax them that much.  But as it currently stands, sometimes you can, and sometimes even having 20-25 slots isn't enough.  I don't think we should be raising the floor universally, I just think the Slot cost of various classes should be normalized.

[Balor]

I'm in a similar mind here. People want more options, but they don't want to expend the stats on what they would not consider optimized. I think some passives however are weak for the cost of a skill slot.

I could see some things trimmed down, however as things are I feel that with BK changes and the like. We are slowly moving to a point where I feel the choices I make matter in terms of skill slots.